Ms Attracta U? Bhroin:

One of the concerns is the potential reliance on existing monitoring frameworks being done under the marine strategy framework directive and their importation. We have huge concerns about the adequacy and the quality of the monitoring being done under the MSFD and about importing and relying on that rather than doing something appropriate to the MPA. It has a different objective, a different requirement, in respect of the MSFD. The MPAs will have specific requirements, and that needs to be reflected.

We have huge issues with the adequacy of the site conservation objectives. As Ms Loughran alluded to earlier, there are multiple reasons, but the inadequacies of the framework we have delivered are fundamentally because of inadequate site-specific conservation objectives, management plans, etc. That is exactly what the Commission has taken Ireland to the Court of Justice on and what we expect in an advocate general's opinion next week. As for relying on those and importing them into this Bill, there is a piece of work to be done to tidy that up. I very much welcome the fact that the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, is here to hear that directly because this is really urgent if we are to reverse those trends in respect of the designations which are about protecting the rock on which the bird nests but not the foraging ground that it needs to go out to in order to sustain itself and its young or to be able to get to that nesting site in the first instance.

I had a further point but it eludes me now.